Face Off (9 page)

CHAPTER
13

LAURA STRODE THROUGH
the lower corridor of the Guildhouse that led to the InterSec holding rooms. She had switched glamours in the elevator lobby in the garage, shedding Fallon Moor and draping Mariel Tate over her like armor. Angry armor. Her long dark hair brushed from side to side against the back of her black jumpsuit, keeping rhythm with the punctuated staccato of her footsteps. Staffers moved out of her way.

She entered the anteroom to Moor’s cell. Arms crossed, Terryn stood at the viewing window, his wings sparking with flashes of indigo and white. Laura stopped beside him. Inside the glass-encased room, Moor prowled, her limbs elongated and bristling with blond hair. She stared back at them, snapping her long-hinged jaws, unable to see through the one-way glass but knowing they were there.

“How long has she been this way?” Laura asked.

“Since I pressed her for the password,” Terryn said.

“She doesn’t look too far into the boggart mania. Has she spoken?”

He shook his head. “Howled a few times.”

Laura grasped the doorknob. “I want answers.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Terryn asked her back.

“We’ll find out.”

She opened the door. Moor lunged as soon as she stepped inside. Laura activated her shields, a hardened layer of essence enveloping her body before Moor made it halfway across the room. As the brownie brought her claws forward, Laura swung an essence-charged fist at her chest and sent her flying into the wall. Moor hit with a loud grunt, then fell to the floor. She scrambled into a crouch, set to leap again.

Thrusting her hand out, Laura stunned her with a blast of essence. Dazed, Moor slumped to the floor. In two long strides, Laura reached her, grabbed her by the hair, and held her up. Biting off the sounds of a binding spell, she sent burning lines of orange essence spiraling out of her free hand and pinned Moor against the wall.

“Drop the act. We need to talk,” she said.

Moor threw back her head and howled in pain as the bindings dug into her.

Laura stepped in closer, heedless of Moor’s sharp teeth. “Do you think I know nothing about brownies? You’re forcing yourself boggie. Knock it off.”

Moor thrashed, the bindings pulling tighter with her movements. She howled again. Laura crossed her arms. “You know how the binding works. You move, it burns. You will calm down or stand there until you pass out from exhaustion, and the bindings sear your arms and legs. Your choice. Either way, I’m going to get what I want.”

Moor growled in her face.

“Keep it up, Moor. I may not be patient enough to wait for you to pass out.” Laura held her hand up and wrenched her fingers closed. The bindings bit in several places, drawing blood.

Moor banged her head back against the wall and screamed. With eyes squeezed shut, she panted, spittle running out of her mouth. Her breathing slowed as her limbs shortened, and her claws retracted. She groaned against the pain of the bindings as her normal brownie shape returned. Still breathing heavily, she glared at Laura through bloodshot eyes.

With a flick of her hand, Laura released the bindings. As Moor fell forward, Laura grabbed her and shoved her onto the metal folding chair. Moor wrapped her arms against her stomach and hunched forward. “I’m going to kill you when I get out of here,” she rasped.

Laura crouched so that Moor could watch essence well up in her eyes. “I’ll look forward to the attempt.”

Moor tried to hold her gaze and failed. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Laura stood and paced to the table. “Good. Any damage I do to you will be more pleasurable that way. Tell me the access codes to the V drive.”

“That wasn’t part of our deal,” Moor said.

Laura folded her arms. “Our deal was cooperation. You want to draw a line? Go right ahead. I’ll get the information one way or another. You talk, and life will be easier for both of us.”

Moor tried to look her in the eye. “It’s financial data. You already have it. You showed me.”

A waver in her modulation said lie. A partial lie, but still a lie. “I didn’t ask what it was. I want access.”

Moor did stare then, malice glittering in her eyes. “Do you think I can’t take whatever you throw at me? Do you think that after everything I’ve done to take down the monarchy, a little pain means anything to me? Do you?”

Laura leaned over the table. “Who said anything about a
little
pain?”

Moor laughed. “You’re not the Guild. InterSec won’t let you go as far as you’ll need to. If you think I’ll give you the key to bring it all down, you’re wrong. Do you hear me? Wrong. I’ll die before I tell you.”

Truth. Hard, clear truth rang in her words. She wasn’t going to tell.

Laura straightened up. “There are all kinds of pain, Moor. I don’t have to touch you to start,” she said. With the honed skill of years of practice, Laura swapped out the Mariel glamour for the Moor glamour without revealing her true face. Startled, Moor stared at her own image. “Have it your way. I’ll fuck the password out of your boyfriend.”

Howling screams followed her out the door. Laura stopped short in the anteroom. Sinclair, his face troubled, had joined Terryn while she had been inside. He looked about to say something, then gave her a crooked smile and left without speaking.

“How long was he here?” she asked.

“He saw and heard it all,” Terryn said.

Laura didn’t speak as she watched Moor’s face bulge and contort. She wanted to follow Sinclair and explain. It was the job. Part of the job. Sometimes . . . sometimes things needed to be done. Things she wasn’t always proud of.

Terryn interrupted her thoughts. “How did you know she was faking before?”

Laura blinked, stared at her feet. “She agreed to cooperate. She would go boggie only if something kept her from cooperating, and the only thing doing that was herself.”

“Unfortunately, we are no closer than before,” he said.

Laura shook her head. “Not true. Now we know that drive is important, and we don’t need to waste time on other things.”

She watched Moor pace back and forth across the room. Trapped. She wondered why Sinclair’s watching bothered her. No, why the look on his face bothered her. He knew what she did. He knew the stakes were high. They were always high. She clenched her jaw. She knew why it bothered her and didn’t want to admit it. Sinclair was a good guy. Honest. Sincere. Honorable. Things she thought about herself. But in that look he had, she doubted that was what he was thinking. And it bothered her.

Mission after mission, she did what needed to be done. She knew some people believed the ends never justified the means. Those were people who had never walked in her shoes. Sometimes what she did to get results was irrelevant. She would have been dead many times over if she didn’t believe that. If she had died, how would that have furthered a greater goal? Or was she being selfish? Did her life matter if her principles were betrayed?

Terryn more often than not held an even harsher view about the brutal necessities of their work. He was immortal. All that time accrued on him made him seem indifferent to the emotion. She knew him, though, knew he had sides he revealed to few. As a druid, she wasn’t immortal, but she wasn’t human either. She would live a long time. She wondered if the cold precision she brought to the heat of battle was making her lose something intrinsically important about herself.

She closed her eyes. Sinclair didn’t have to say anything to make her face herself. She wasn’t sure what his look meant, but she knew it wasn’t admiration. What was she becoming? And was Sinclair enough reason to change? Did she even want to?

A bang against the glass startled her. Moor scratched with clawed hands against the viewing glass, her face contorting in a snarl. Her eyes blazed yellow as she snapped, her jaw filled with razor-sharp teeth. Frantic, she flipped backward onto her elongated limbs, then scrambled around the room looking for a way out.

“I don’t think she’s faking it this time,” Terryn said.

CHAPTER
14

“YOU LOOK LIKE
hell,” Laura said.

It had been five days since she had last seen Sinclair. He hadn’t called, or, rather, he hadn’t called her. He had checked in at InterSec at the prescribed intervals, but he hadn’t contacted her even after she left him messages. So she finally called him.

Stretched out on the couch in her Alexandria apartment, Sinclair chuckled with his eyes closed. “I have been awake for almost three days that have included drinking, tramping through the woods, arm wrestling, and drag racing a truck. Then I had to ride here in the trunk of your car. I’m a little tired.”

Laura slid a cold bottle of beer into his hand, then dropped into an armchair. Picking up the remote, she lowered the sound on the flat-screen TV above the fireplace but left the news on. “Oh, sure. I’m stressed out undercover with an ex-CIA spook hanging over me, and you’re out having fun with the boys.”

He levered himself up so he could drink his beer. “I will gladly switch with you. I’m used to arresting rednecks, not hanging with them.”

She smiled. “How bad are they?”

He rolled his eyes. “You would not believe the crap these guys are into. The federal government is a criminal organization. The Constitution was dictated by God and must be obeyed, but all the laws that came after are from men and are optional. The fey are dirty scum that need to be wiped out—as well as non-Christians, most everyone darker than an albino, people with college degrees, and anyone who doesn’t drive a Chevy.”

“A Chevy? That’s nuts,” she said.

He laughed again. “Yeah. It’s a different world.”

Laura slumped in her chair, dangling her glass of orange juice and vodka over the armrest. “It sounds like you’re in, though.”

He held out his beer. “Meet the new freelance consultant for the Legacy Foundation.”

She tapped the bottle with her glass. “Let me guess—weapons training at a militia camp?”

“Yeah. They’ve got several acres up in Virginia where they run around playing guerrilla revolutionary. Now I have to figure out how to teach them enough so they think I know what I’m doing but not enough that they might learn something,” he said.

She watched the news anchor Jenna Dahl talking in front of a picture of Draigen macCullen. She was tempted to turn up the volume, but the image was gone before she finished the thought. Terryn would brief her on anything important. She sipped her drink. “That’s always the hard part of all this—sometimes helping a cause you don’t agree with in the process of getting what you went in for. I try to get in and get out as fast as possible.”

He rocked his head. “How far do you go?”

Laura stared down at her drink. How far indeed. She had done things she never thought she would do. Some depressed her, some embarrassed her, and, yes, a couple of things horrified her. She didn’t like to think about it. Ever since Sinclair walked away from Fallon Moor’s holding cell, she had been expecting his question. “It depends on the stakes, Jono.”

Curious, he cocked his head at her. “That sounds intriguing and . . . um, not so good.”

“It’s not that melodramatic. Sometimes you have to push the envelope. It’s the nature of the job.” She rose from the chair and freshened her drink at the kitchen counter. More ice and juice. She had rules about alcohol. Living a life with so much solitude and secrets made bottles and pills seductive. She had seen friends and colleagues spiral into despair, then burn out. Burned out of the job. Burned out of their lives. The loneliness of undercover work made them feel trapped, with no one to share their hopes and fears. She knew she wasn’t an alcoholic, but she wondered how many people thought about it like she did every time she poured a drink.

“So why are you so secretive?” he asked.

Even Terryn didn’t know everything she did to get a job done. Sinclair couldn’t see her from this angle. If he thought she was going to bare her soul to him after a few weeks, he was mistaken. Laura returned to the armchair and propped her feet up on the coffee table, something she had never done in the Alexandria apartment. She didn’t think she’d ever sat in the armchair before either. She brought the glass to her lips, keeping her expression neutral. “Have I killed people without thinking about it? Have I slept with people I didn’t want to? That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?”

He pursed his lips. “I didn’t mean for the conversation to go in this direction.”

She let out a mild scoff, not sarcastic, but understanding. “Yeah. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Things slide in directions you don’t expect and don’t intend. So you manage it on the fly. Sometimes that means dealing with things you don’t want to.”

Sinclair focused his attention on his beer bottle. “And sometimes you go over the line?”

She sighed. “The problem with this job, Jono, is that there are no lines except the ones you draw for yourself. And then they move.” She took a long sip of her drink. “The answer is ‘yes’ to both those questions, by the way.”

She said it because it needed to be said. If Sinclair ended up a part of her life—either work or personal—he was going to hear it at some point anyway. When he glanced at her then, she surprised herself by feeling relieved. His face looked reflective rather than disappointed in her.

“When I saw you in the room, like Moor, it scared me a little. We never went that far on the force,” he said.

His admission touched her. She doubted Jonathan Sinclair discussed being afraid often. “InterSec has wider parameters for use of force. The situation has to justify it, and we have to answer for it if we’re wrong.”

“You threatened to kill me the night we met,” he said.

She stared. “And the answer to your unspoken question is, yes, I would have if it were necessary.”

“But you didn’t.”

She gestured with her palm up. “Because I had time for alternatives. They weren’t great ones for either of us, but you’re not dead, and I don’t have more blood on my hands. I can live with those results.”

He grunted. “Me, too.”

“You seem uncomfortable about something,” she said.

He pushed his lower lip out, a habit that she thought made him look boyish. “This stuff is a lot less glamorous than I thought it was.”

She smirked. “No pun intended?”

He rolled his head toward her. “No, but I guess it’s more glamorous for you. I’ve spent the last few weeks driving businessmen around who spend more time on the phone trying to line up affairs than doing business.”

“That’s the grunt-work part. It doesn’t exactly get the adrenaline flowing,” she said.

Sinclair stared at the ceiling. “Exactly.”

“But when you do get it going, you realize you can’t live on that level all the time, even if it’s a welcome rush at the moment.”

His eyebrow flicked up. “I hadn’t considered that.”

The television screen switched to a view of the Key Bridge. The banner crawl along the bottom of the screen announced that Ian Whiting’s body still had not been recovered. Footage played from the morning his car was found. The camera zoomed in on his shoes where he left them with a note on the abutment.

“Do you think you could ever do that?” Sinclair asked.

“Suicide?” She shook her head. “Not my nature. Cress doesn’t think it was Whiting’s either. She thinks he walked away.”

Sinclair grunted in surprise. “How about that? Say ‘screw it’ and walk away?”

“Sure, but I don’t think my life’s ever been that bad.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Silence stretched across the room as the news moved on to something else. She wondered if what he had seen in the interrogation room with Fallon Moor was behind that last question.

“I can drive you back if you want,” she said.

He didn’t speak for the longest moment. “Why did you ask me to come here?”

She shrugged. “Because it’s your first real assignment, and whether you thought you needed to or not, it helps to step out of the role. You’re going to need to create a safe space in your life, Jono, somewhere you can go and remember who you are.”

He grinned. “Is this your way of asking me to move in?”

She laughed. He was changing the subject, or at least lightening it. Whatever he was thinking about what he had seen her do the other day he was letting slide. For now, anyway. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen. I thought you might like some dinner.”

“Wow. What are you making?” he asked.

She got up and walked back to the kitchen. “A phone call. I’ll get the take-out menus.”

Sinclair followed her across the room. “You know, for a badass, you’re really a big old softy.”

She slid folded menus onto the counter. Glancing at him, she smiled. “Great. Nice to know you think I’m old, fat, and flabby.”

He stepped close behind her and spoke into her ear. “You can prove me wrong.”

The low resonance of his voice tickled, and she bumped a playful elbow into his stomach. “I don’t have to prove anything.”

As she turned, he leaned forward with both hands against the counter, pinning her between his arms without touching her. “Maybe I do.”

They stared into each other’s eyes. This close, she noticed the dark brown and red flecks in his amber irises and wondered about his jotunn heritage. She knew little about the Teutonic giants, less about human/fey hybrids. Jono Sinclair intrigued her on so many levels that warning bells went off in her head. She didn’t know why and didn’t want to listen to them. He leaned his face closer and closed his eyes. She swept a menu between their lips, and he kissed the other side.

“I’d love a pizza. How about you?” she asked.

Chuckling, he plucked the menu out of her hands and kissed her on the lips. She laughed into the kiss, relieved and happy that he wasn’t going to let her work come between them.

Pleased, he leaned his head back and looked down at her. “I get to pick dessert.”